


on a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man

by janie_tangerine



Series: there's a devil lying by your side [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Magic, Demons, Eldritch, Gen, I Blame Tumblr, Inappropriate Humor, Love at First Sight, M/M, Necromancy, Past Character Death, Revenge, Succubi & Incubi, Suicide Attempt (mentioned/past), Tentacles, more or less, not as angst as it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 17:31:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12822507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: in which Robb Stark needs a demon to help him getting revenge for his family. He gets Theon.





	on a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lordhellebore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordhellebore/gifts).



> I wrote this for a round of Halloween requests I took last month, the prompt was: _throbb - theon is some kind of eldritch horror kraken being, robb's scared only in the beginning :P_. This thing is utterly ridiculous but I LOVED WRITING IT SO IDEK here you go guys. It most probably *does* show that Johannes Cabal is my new favorite series.
> 
> Anyway, as usual: the title is from Nick Cave's _Red Right Hand_ , they absolutely don't belong to me and I wish I did, and now I'm sauntering vaguely downwards. I *might* write the follow-up at some point but likely not this year /o\

Thing is: Robb has technically no idea of  _what_  he’s summoning here.

Or who. Semantics. But beggars can’t be choosers and he’s  _really_  at the end of his rope, and he’s not going to rest until bloody fucking Walder Frey gets his due for what he did to his family, so whatever comes out of the circle he  _hopes_  will work as a trap, well, he’s going to have to work with it.

Necromancy, he was told, isn’t something you learn in six months.

But he really can’t wait longer than that. And it’s not even that he wants to bring  _them_  back to life – he could not and he’s not sure they’d even want it – but he just wants Frey to fucking pay.

So he stands in front of the circle and waits.

–

He doesn’t have to wait very long, because a moment after he finishes reciting his incantation – shit, he hopes the accents were right – a black-gold smoke starts rising from inside the circle. Slow at first, then faster, then faster, then Robb hears some  _noise_  and he doesn’t even know how to describe it but he’s not sure he likes it, and then the smoke disappears, and –

“Well, it’s been a long fucking time,” says the… demon? Devil?  _Robb has no clue_. Shit, it’s – he’s got tentacles all over, and it’s  _tall_ , and Robb can only see the black, thick appendages that glow slightly golden if the firelight hits them the right way, and it sounded like a  _he_ , actually, but what the fuck does he know, but what he knows it’s that the demon is  _huge_  and it’s a good thing Robb drew a damned large circle or it’d have spread out now –

“Oh, there you are,” the thing says, and suddenly the tentacles in the front shrink slightly and –

All right.

Now Robb is sort of face to face with a human-looking chest and a human-looking face, and it’s definitely a  _he_ , with dark hair and golden eyes and long dark hair, and in another life he’d have thought him  _very_  attractive, not counting the part where he’s basically  _floating on a small sea of tentacles_.

He swallows.

“Here I am,” he agrees, looking up at the demon, or creature, or  _whatever_. He was specifically looking for a demon. He supposes he got one.

“I can see that you were nice enough to bring me to the surface,” the demon goes on. “Which was lovely of you, honest. I mean, Hell is what it is, after a few centuries it gets boring.”

“ _Boring_?”

The demon shrugs. It’s such a human gesture, Robb can’t even believe his damned eyes. “Getting in is all paperwork these days, it takes people years to. And I’m like, as you can see,  _a demon_ , but I don’t exactly work for the direction. I’m more of a freelancer, really, which is inconvenient when no one’s looking for you. Actually, how did you even summon me?”

“Uh, with a spell?” Robb asks, because  _how_  would he otherwise?

“Yeah, well, I got  _that_  far, but given that my name is quite complicated to pronounce, no one ever spells it  _right_. Never mind that my bloody uncle is the one who gets all the spotlight and  _he_  is the one in necromancy books, not  _me_.”

“Er,” Robb says, “honestly, I just – wasn’t looking for  _a demon_ specifically. I was looking for one who’d help me out for my specific reasons. I didn’t make any names.”

“Oh,” the demon replies, and now he sounds  _delighted_ , what the hell, “does that mean the system picked me  _specifically_  for you? Now, look at that. I imagine we could have this conversation outside –”

“Have you taken me for an idiot? I’m not breaking it until I’m sure of what’ll happen after I do it.”

“Smart boy,” the demon agrees. “Actually, how old are you even? Sixteen?”

Robb groans. “Seventeen, but that’s not the bloody point.”

“Practicing necromancy at seventeen? My, my, how the world has fallen. Well then, smartass, how would you need my services? And  _who are you_ , for that matter?”

Right.  _Right._

Robb needs to remember that he has the upper hand, at least until that circle isn’t broken.

“My name is Robb Stark. And I need your help getting revenge.”

“Oh,  _revenges_. I like revenges. That’s totally my field. Do go ahead.”

“I – well, I had a family. Until a year ago. Me, my parents, my two sisters, my two brothers, and – Jon’s technically my cousin, but he’s always been with us so he’s like a brother to me. Never mind. We –”

“Let me guess. House in the countryside, maybe the parents owned some land, they employed some people to look after it, maybe you even had a few maids, and everything was all right until it wasn’t?”

“How –”

“Smartass, I’ve been doing this job for centuries. You aren’t the first. But do go ahead.”

“Well, our neighbors. Uh, they’re – a large family. The Freys. They desperately wanted to buy out the property – actually, they had bought off all of the others around the area. I think they want to sell to some company that’d open a large factory there, but my father wouldn’t budge – I mean, it’s been the family house for centuries. He didn’t want to move or to let it go. So – Frey invited him for a  _dinner_ where they’d discuss things. Actually, he invited the entire family bar Jon. Because he wasn’t, well,  _one of them, technically_.”

“And not you?”

“I was at a boarding school then.” Robb sighs. “They came back home. And they all died during the following week. I  _know_  he did it – either poisoned the food or  _something_  – but he bought out the police chief of our town and they closed the case as a tragic accident. I was devastated, and the only relative alive was my mom’s sister, and –”

“Don’t tell me, she sold, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Robb admits. “We had to move in with her, of course. To London. But – she never – it’s obvious that she didn’t want Jon there. She didn’t want me either, but she couldn’t say it outright. And – she treated him so horribly that he just –” He breathes in, tries to not let his voice break as he says it. “One day I came back to our room, there was a letter on his bed. It was apologizing to me. And then I heard a scream from outside. He – he jumped out of the window not long before and someone just found him.”

“So, he’s dead?” The demon asks, sounding slightly more serious than he had before.

“No,” Robb sighs. “He survived, but he hasn’t really woken up since. I mean, you can get him to eat and drink and so on, but he doesn’t really answer you and he’s never  _conscious._ The doctors said that he might or might not. It was six months ago. I – I told my aunt that if she just would give me an allowance of the money I was technically owed I’d rent a room and bring him with and be out of her life. She accepted. So – I’ve spent the last six months making sure he doesn’t die, doing accounting for the drugstore below my apartment, and when I’m not doing that –”

“You’re studying necromancy? Well, well, that’s admirable. Guess you’re a  _bright_  smartass. If you want someone to bring your brother back, though, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong man. I mean, I can’t do that shit. You  _know_  you’ve gotta ask the other side for that, don’t you?”

“Fuck the other side,” Robb says. “Don’t you think I didn’t  _pray_  until my fingers hurt and until I had no voice anymore before trying out necromancy? I found out that at least  _your_  lot answers, when you call them.”

“Fair is fair, we do.”

“And I know  _you_  can’t – bring people back. I saw that some people in my, uh, current line of work, have tried to do it and succeeded up to a point. If he doesn’t wake up himself,  _I_  will find a way to. That’s not why I’m talking to you. I’m talking to you because when summoning – whatever was going to come out of that circle, I asked for someone who’d help me get revenge, who’d have no quibbles helping me but who also wouldn’t have necessarily sought to hurt innocents that might get involved without being guilty and who was smart and cunning and not necessarily out for blood. And I got  _you_. What I want is help in taking Frey down and giving my aunt a taste of what she gave  _me_.”

“Aren’t you a little spitfire,” the demon says. “But that’s quite all right, I do enjoy people with a personality. Well, seems like the system likes me, or maybe I’m one of the few down there who’s not a complete arse, because that’s what you were looking for, but never mind that. I haven’t been out in  _years_  and I could use some exercise. Your human world is so  _interesting_. Wait, how many people do you need revenge against? Three? Like, Frey, your aunt, her husband, I suppose?”

Robb laughs. “I wish. If it was only three, I’d have killed that bastard myself. Frey has a ridiculous amount of kids, he’s so old he had time to wed some ten times. And I know for sure that a good part of them must have helped him out. Has to be at least twenty of them who were in on it.”

The demon  _claps his damned hands_. “Oh, you mean I get to lay to waste  _that many_? That’s lovely. All men, hm?”

“Could be, but who knows. Some daughters might have helped.”

“So I’d get some decent feeding from both. Well,  _Robb_ , seems to me like you’re offering me a pretty sweet deal. I’m very much inclined to accept.” Some of those tentacles tend to reach out towards him, but then suddenly draw back. “So why am I still trapped here?”

Robb breathes in. Good.  _Good_. “Demons are bound by their word, aren’t they?”

“Sure they are.”

“All right. I want your word you won’t  _ever_  hurt me, Jon or anyone related to us that is not – well, my aunt.”

“Fair’s fair,” the demon agrees. “Fine. Robb Stark, you’ve got my word. That said, why would I even want to eat you when you’re  _that_ interesting? I mean, not everyone is that laid-back when they see my true form.”

Robb shrugs. “It’s  _tentacles_. They're kind of daunting, but – they’re somewhat beautiful, when you look at them in the right light. And by the way, what’s your name?”

“Right, how rude of me,” the demon says, and then –

Then Robb realizes why  _he_  wouldn’t get summoned, since it’s  _long_ and mostly made of consonants and he doesn’t even know how to begin pronouncing it.

The demon must have read that on his face.

“But you can call me Theon, for short.”

“Oh,  _good_. Well then. All right,” Robb says, and then moves forward his foot, stepping on the white chalk he had drawn in his flat’s basement, and breaks it.

Suddenly, he feels one of those tentacles touch his cheek, and for a moment he expects it to be slimy, but –

It’s not. It’s  _warm_ , and solid, and  _heavy_ , but definitely not slimy. It’s like an arm, if arms didn’t have bones and wrapped around your waist, too.

“But look at  _that_ ,” Theon says. “You’re actually  _liking_  it?”

“I don’t know about it,” Robb says slowly, “but it’s better than anyone would expect just looking at it.” He raises a hand and touches the tentacle wrapped around his waist. It feels warmer.

“Hm,” Theon goes on, “you’re definitely  _something_.”

“By the way, what did you mean with, uh,  _eat both_?”

Theon sends him a smirk that kind of makes Robb’s knees go weak, and then the tentacles quickly leave Robb’s waist and face, and suddenly Theon’s form is shrinking down and down until the mass has reformed into a lovely, long pair of legs clad in black. Like this, Theon’s barely taller than he is, and when he blinks and opens his eyes again, they aren’t golden anymore – they’re the same dark brown as his hair.

“See,” Theon says, “all demons feed on something. Most of us feed on souls. But I enjoy obtaining mine by, you know,  _seducing_ people.”

“Are you – are you a  _succubus_?”

“Might be,” Theon smirks, “but it’s not as if I have to eat everyone I bed. Regardless, I enjoy both sides of the pond, so to speak, so if your Frey man has a nice pick of equally horrid sons or daughters, I shall enjoy tasting their souls very much. The worse off they are, the tastier, honestly.”

“Well, good to know this is a mutually beneficial arrangement,” Robb says, smiling ever so slightly, even if there’s  _nothing_  to smile about in this mess.

Theon smiles back.

“Oh, it  _is_. And by the way, that thing you made me swear? Entirely unnecessary. You’re too  _nice_  to even be a good meal for me.”

“Too  _nice_? I just summoned you to  _kill at least twenty people_.”

“For entirelyselfless reasons,” Theon snorts. “Don’t you worry. When it comes to  _entirely selfless people_ , they’re usually a better lay than a nice, succulent dinner. So, shall we plan?”

Oh.

 _Oh_.

If that’s how it is, Robb thinks, he – he really might be on board.

However  _the system_  works, Robb decides, it really must have matched them well.

 

End.


End file.
